Post by marion on Sept 14, 2024 17:47:21 GMT
The full title is Cake : The Marie Antoinette Playlist. I thought a musical about MA was too good to miss but it wasn’t quite the firecracker I was hoping for. It is very much in the vibe of Six, but has ensemble dancing to hip hop numbers (mainly) so a slight Hamilton nod.
The plot is very loosely based on The Affair of the Diamond Necklace where a conwoman, Jeanne, tries to steal a diamond necklace by getting a deposit from the Cardinal, on the false understanding that the necklace is for the Queen and she will pay the balance. This resulted in a terrible scandal for poor old MA and was one of the key incidents which led to her downfall.
There are only ten in the company, six dancers plus Jeanne, who narrates most of the action, MA, the Cardinal, and Nicole a revolutionary prostitute.
MA is played by Zizi Strallen, a top notch musical theatre star, sister of various other Strallens and niece of Bonnie Langford. When she talks she sounds exactly like Bonnie. Jeanne is played by Renee Lamb who was in Six.
The show started 30minutes late which put me in a seriously bad mood! On the whole I thought it was quite good and the two leads were really excellent. However, the plot seemed to require us to think that meeting Jeanne alerted MA to her empty life and privilege, so that she went from begging Jeanne not to implicate her in the scandal because she feared the populace would have her killed, to suggesting she did so to save herself and spark a revolution because that’s what society needed. Now, even if the audience may have largely agreed with that, I would lay good money that this did NOT occur to Marie Antoinette. So I felt that it floundered at the end on a false premise really.
It was quite funny, a ninety minute straight-through show, and well executed. For me it lacked something but most of the audience went nuts at the end.
The plot is very loosely based on The Affair of the Diamond Necklace where a conwoman, Jeanne, tries to steal a diamond necklace by getting a deposit from the Cardinal, on the false understanding that the necklace is for the Queen and she will pay the balance. This resulted in a terrible scandal for poor old MA and was one of the key incidents which led to her downfall.
There are only ten in the company, six dancers plus Jeanne, who narrates most of the action, MA, the Cardinal, and Nicole a revolutionary prostitute.
MA is played by Zizi Strallen, a top notch musical theatre star, sister of various other Strallens and niece of Bonnie Langford. When she talks she sounds exactly like Bonnie. Jeanne is played by Renee Lamb who was in Six.
The show started 30minutes late which put me in a seriously bad mood! On the whole I thought it was quite good and the two leads were really excellent. However, the plot seemed to require us to think that meeting Jeanne alerted MA to her empty life and privilege, so that she went from begging Jeanne not to implicate her in the scandal because she feared the populace would have her killed, to suggesting she did so to save herself and spark a revolution because that’s what society needed. Now, even if the audience may have largely agreed with that, I would lay good money that this did NOT occur to Marie Antoinette. So I felt that it floundered at the end on a false premise really.
It was quite funny, a ninety minute straight-through show, and well executed. For me it lacked something but most of the audience went nuts at the end.
Anymore to come?
